The Time Traveler's Almanac (94 page)

But strange how the mind of an essayist, be it never so stricken, roves and ranges! I remember pausing before a wide door-step and wondering if perchance it was on this very one that the young De Quincey lay ill and faint while poor Ann flew as fast as her feet would carry her to Oxford Street, the “stony-hearted stepmother” of them both, and came back bearing that “glass of port wine and spices” but for which he might, so he thought, actually have died. Was this the very door-step that the old De Quincey used to revisit in homage? I pondered Ann’s fate, the cause of her sudden vanishing from the ken of her boy friend; and presently I blamed myself for letting the past override the present. Poor vanished Soames!

And for myself, too, I began to be troubled. What had I better do? Would there be a hue and cry— “Mysterious Disappearance of an Author,” and all that? He had last been seen lunching and dining in my company. Hadn’t I better get a hansom and drive straight to Scotland Yard? They would think I was a lunatic. After all, I reassured myself, London was a very large place, and one very dim figure might easily drop out of it unobserved, now especially, in the blinding glare of the near Jubilee. Better say nothing at all, I thought.

AND I was right. Soames’s disappearance made no stir at all. He was utterly forgotten before any one, so far as I am aware, noticed that he was no longer hanging around. Now and again some poet or prosaist may have said to another, “What has become of that man Soames?” but I never heard any such question asked. As for his landlady in Dyott Street, no doubt he had paid her weekly, and what possessions he may have had in his rooms were enough to save her from fretting. The solicitor through whom he was paid his annuity may be presumed to have made inquiries, but no echo of these resounded. There was something rather ghastly to me in the general unconsciousness that Soames had existed, and more than once I caught myself wondering whether Nupton, that babe unborn, were going to be right in thinking him a figment of my brain.

In that extract from Nupton’s repulsive book there is one point which perhaps puzzles you. How is it that the author, though I have here mentioned him by name and have quoted the exact words he is going to write, is not going to grasp the obvious corollary that I have invented nothing? The answer can be only this: Nupton will not have read the later passages of this memoir. Such lack of thoroughness is a serious fault in any one who undertakes to do scholar’s work. And I hope these words will meet the eye of some contemporary rival to Nupton and be the undoing of Nupton.

I like to think that some time between 1992 and 1997 somebody will have looked up this memoir, and will have forced on the world his inevitable and startling conclusions. And I have reason for believing that this will be so. You realize that the reading-room into which Soames was projected by the devil was in all respects precisely as it will be on the afternoon of June 3, 1997. You realise, therefore, that on that afternoon, when it comes round, there the selfsame crowd will be, and there Soames will be, punctually, he and they doing precisely what they did before. Recall now Soames’s account of the sensation he made. You may say that the mere difference of his costume was enough to make him sensational in that uniformed crowd. You wouldn’t say so if you had ever seen him, and I assure you that in no period would Soames be anything but dim. The fact that people are going to stare at him and follow him around and seem afraid of him, can be explained only on the hypothesis that they will somehow have been prepared for his ghostly visitation. They will have been awfully waiting to see whether he really would come. And when he does come the effect will of course be – awful.

An authentic, guaranteed, proved ghost, but only a ghost, alas! Only that. In his first visit Soames was a creature of flesh and blood, whereas the creatures among whom he was projected were but ghosts, I take it – solid, palpable, vocal, but unconscious and automatic ghosts, in a building that was itself an illusion. Next time that building and those creatures will be real. It is of Soames that there will be but the semblance. I wish I could think him destined to revisit the world actually, physically, consciously. I wish he had this one brief escape, this one small treat, to look forward to. I never forget him for long. He is where he is and forever. The more rigid moralists among you may say he has only himself to blame. For my part, I think he has been very hardly used. It is well that vanity should be chastened; and Enoch Soames’s vanity was, I admit, above the average, and called for special treatment. But there was no need for vindictiveness. You say he contracted to pay the price he is paying. Yes; but I maintain that he was induced to do so by fraud. Well informed in all things, the Devil must have known that my friend would gain nothing by his visit to futurity. The whole thing was a very shabby trick. The more I think of it, the more detestable the Devil seems to me.

Of him I have caught sight several times, here and there, since that day at the Vingtieme. Only once, however, have I seen him at close quarters. This was a couple of years ago, in Paris. I was walking one afternoon along the rue d’Antin, and I saw him advancing from the opposite direction, overdressed as ever, and swinging an ebony cane and altogether behaving as though the whole pavement belonged to him. At thought of Enoch Soames and the myriads of other sufferers eternally in this brute’s dominion, a great cold wrath filled me, and I drew myself up to my full height. But – well, one is so used to nodding and smiling in the street to anybody whom one knows that the action becomes almost independent of oneself; to prevent it requires a very sharp effort and great presence of mind. I was miserably aware, as I passed the Devil, that I nodded and smiled to him. And my shame was the deeper and hotter because he, if you please, stared straight at me with the utmost haughtiness.

To be cut, deliberately cut, by HIM! I was, I still am, furious at having had that happen to me.

TROUSSEAU: FASHION FOR TIME TRAVELERS

Genevieve Valentine

It’s a mistake to go. Let’s start there.

If you insist, there are some things you’re better off knowing.

*   *   *

Jumpsuits. Jumpsuits for Forward motion.

Now you’re thinking about some movies you’ve seen or some ads you’ve read on the rail about a future where everyone’s in skin-tight white. You snickered at how silly it looked, or admired how immaculate, this world where no one is ever carrying coffee and no one sweats and if they have subways instead of personal transport pods then the train cars get wiped down every ten minutes, and nothing ever touches you.

If that’s why you’re traveling Forward, you should rethink.

Cleanliness is for the people who can afford it. Whatever future you jump to (and the ads are incorrect, there’s never just the one), on whatever orbiting body you end up, there is going to be a ruling class, and you are not going to be in it.

The numbers are against you, and the future’s a treacherous place even if this isn’t your very first jump. Even if you chanced it with a bespoke bioluminescent evening ensemble and lucked out in the right climate to sustain it and enchanted the right social echelon so that they’d take a stranger in to dinner, running with the rich and the beautiful is more than you’re ready for.

(If you run with them now, congratulations, and it’s no wonder that you’re aiming high, but the practicals will undermine you in ways no one has trained you to think of. Depending where you land, the bios that make up your jacket have a labor union, and you’re screwed for keeping them out past sunset without paying overtime. Be safe. Stay low.)

You need work boots that don’t jog anybody’s memory; you need a jumpsuit, unmarked and dark and baggy, with some pockets outside and some pockets inside where no one can reach. The future isn’t safe. Have a backup plan strapped to your thigh.

If you think that means a weapon, rethink.

*   *   *

Backward isn’t any better, to be honest.

You have to be able to aim before you can plan for the journey, and your first time will be a wash, no matter what they tell you. Nervous people end up on the outskirts of remote Viking camps or out too far in the Dead Sea and have to use their callback in a hurry.

Don’t worry. Sensors get sharper every day, and any couture house worth its salt has a satisfaction guarantee. (Give no money to an establishment that won’t accommodate.) House of Lewis, the now-vanished icon of the trade, distilled theirs into only six words: “Come back. Look forward. Start again.”

Remember that moving through time is a skill; no matter who’s holding your hand when that bright machine powers up, there are no chauffeurs for what this is.

*   *   *

When you’re headed Backward, wear natural fibers only. Rayon gets you burned as a witch if you’re not careful.

A long linen tunic will pass about sixty-five percent of the time. If caught out, claim you were set upon and divested of the rest. It’s a prime opportunity to appreciate the immersive experience of being in another place and time as you do labor to earn other garments.

(There are no guarantees that even that cover story will work; the world’s a funny thing. You’ll be all right in Cleopatra’s Egypt, but if you land in feudal Japan and they slice you open for disrespecting the presence of the Emperor, you’re on your own.)

Your second-best bet is wool. Wool isn’t fancy, but you shouldn’t be – sumptuary laws shoot to kill, in some places. Make your sleeves wider than you think you’ll need, hems longer than you think is safe. You’ll be surprised how cold nights can get in the Andes. You’re traveling light; every half-yard of wool you can use is your insurance.

Silk is softer, sometimes finer, but a risk. Make sure your Arabic or Hindi or Chinese dialects are up to snuff, and even then, be prepared to claim the garment is a gift from someone who’s dead, and to peel it off to give whoever’s asking.

Adornments of any kind should stay out of sight until you have the lay of the land. No exceptions. It doesn’t matter when you are or who you’re trying to impress. There are no definitive census numbers regarding those Travelers who go missing, killed every year on the roadside, or in alleys, or in dark rooms by someone who knows you’re a stranger and will never be missed. No Travel agency is willing to release them.

Think about why that is; leave anything that glitters out of sight.

*   *   *

It’s impossible to disappear into your dress.

Everything you wear betrays you – its make, its cost, its cut, its age. Why you have it, or why you don’t. Think what a thin gold band on a single finger means; where you’re going, wherever that is, every stitch will give you away.

You might – if you’re confident enough to jump, if you aim as you hoped, if you land where you’re powerful – be in a place where you can almost disappear. A man in a well-cut dark grey suit can go fifty years from now in either direction, across thousands of miles, and avoid the sort of notice that gets you pointed out to constables.

(It’s easy when you’re powerful. Anything is. If that’s the reason you’re traveling local, rethink.)

In eighteenth-century France, a heel less than two inches high is for a man with aspirations past his abilities. An Ethiopian habesha kemis in white signals a guest at a formal occasion. A man in Tokyo in 1872 is a toady or a traitor, whether he wears a kimono or a waistcoat. An unmarried Russian wears her kokoshnik open in the back, and to close it claims a thing you might not mean.

Clothes speak for you; go carefully.

*   *   *

The Persians invented cotton underwear several centuries BC. Maybe start there.

*   *   *

Two hundred years from now, they say, our clothes will be loose and woven through with UVB, cocoons of safety from an ever-warmer sun.

Everyone who goes Forward has said it; whatever future they come from, we’re more doomed then.

*   *   *

It’s a mistake to go.

*   *   *

Don’t wear or carry anything on the cutting edge. You can always explain something a little out of fashion, but rarely can you pass off the new.

If you mention a technology (a fabric, a color, a concept) that doesn’t exist, and someone questions you, say, “I saw it on a card.” Carry a handful of cigarette cards or postcards or cartes des visites with you in a silver case, and sift through them a moment as if it was just there and you’re hoping to find it. Everyone will think you’re eccentric, but that’s better than the alternative.

If you’re somewhen without cards, say, “I heard it from a traveler.” If you’re in small or far-away places, be prepared to describe someone specific. Make them old; soldiers rarely go after those who sound as if they’re about to die on their own.

If all else fails, say, “I saw it in a dream.”

People will believe that. They’ll expect you to have strange dreams. Anywhere you go will be neck-deep in superstition, but taken one at a time, people aren’t fools. Wherever you end up, they know already that you’re odd; they can tell you’re not theirs.

*   *   *

Black is a color of sophistication, except when it’s the color of death. Forward travelers in black might be given responsibilities beyond what they can guess; black is the color of a judge’s robes. Black is the color of plague doctors, of people to be taken very seriously.

Red is the color of blood, the color of a hundred feuding houses you’ll never be able to keep straight; it’s the color of fishing boats you can’t steer, the banner of allies who won’t reach you in time.

Where purple exists, it’s the color of kings. Don’t even think about it.

Green is the color of forest outlaws and spring kimono; it’s a color of starting over. It’s the color of messengers and the Holy Roman Empire. Optimists and armies wear green.

Blue is the color of mystics, the color of weddings, the color of dresses meant to call rain down on the grass. Blue you can make without worry for a throne; blue is safe, as colors go.

White is the color of purity, except when it’s the color of mourning. It indicates an absence; it’s the color of unfinished things. It’s the color of all those sleek, cold spaces we haven’t built yet, made for people to stand in and never touch.